As soon as the bell rang, I slipped into the girl’s restroom at the far end of the Math wing and shadowed into Fred Swain’s apartment, touching down in a closet. If there was a trick to landing, I was going to have to figure it out. This time it was a closet. Next time, it could be worse. What if Val sent me to collect on some poor shmuck that lived on a boat? Shadowing into the middle of the ocean didn’t sound like my idea of a good time—especially since my swimming expertise capped out at the doggie paddle. Becoming shark chow would put a cramp in my newly found love life.
I’d never been to California before. This wasn’t how I pictured my first trip out West, either. Kendra and I had talked about a road trip for senior year spring break, but both her mom and mine shot that down before we could even pitch the entire plan. Go figure. I was allowed to face down evil in all its chomptastic forms, but forbidden to leave home for a week of normal partying without parental supervision. Where the hell was the balance in that? I made a mental note to bring it up next time Mom got on one of her normal life kicks.
I stepped from the closet, trying not to disturb anything. Val had given me instructions on how to collect Fred’s soul. You’d think a process like that would be complicated, but the way the demon described it, the whole thing was scary simple. All I had to do was touch him and shadow us to the Shadow Realm. Wham, bam, enjoy eternity in Hell, ma’am.
I looked around and cringed. I had no idea what Swain made the deal for, but it sure as hell wasn’t money. The place was a dump. The closet door wobbled on its hinges and didn’t open all the way because a huge part of the floor was peeling up. The walls, probably once white, were a kind of nicotine yellow, and matched the oddly shaped grease stains on the wall above the stove. Even the fridge was beaten up. The handle was missing, and the door was dented like someone had tossed a bowling ball at the center. As for the grout between the floor tiles? I wasn’t even going to speculate what was growing in there. A dark, semi-fuzzy substance snaked between the ceramic, making me wonder when the last time—if ever—the floor had been washed.
Laughter spilled from the other room, and I tensed for a moment before realizing what it was. The television. I let out a breath and took a step forward, but froze when the floor beneath my feet gave a loud groan.
“Hello?” came a man’s jittery voice. There was a rustling sound, and a moment later, he appeared in the doorway.
Fred Swain was a tall, portly man with dark brown hair that spiked in the front à la surfer style, and a wide, angular face. He stood over six feet tall and had a stare that reminded me of the rat Mom caught last summer in the basement. Beady eyes and a long, pointy nose. Obviously the deal he made hadn’t included looks, either. I breathed in and almost gagged. Or personal hygiene.
Blinking twice, he asked, “Who the hell are you?”
What was I supposed to do? Introduce myself? Hi, my name is Jessie, and I’m here for your soul, didn’t exactly sound like a good ice breaker. Maybe I should wear a name tag. Or a T-shirt.
“Um, my name is Jessie. I work for Valefar.”
Swain blinked again, then backed away two steps. “Please,” he said, clasping both hands together and dropping to his knees. “Give me just a little more time. I’m not finished yet.”
“Not my call.” I felt sorry for the guy, but it’s not like I could do anything. I was technically just as trapped as he was.
“Yes.” His head bounced around like a bobblehead. “Yes, you can. Go back and tell him you couldn’t find me. Give me a week.”
“I think we both know how this goes down if I have to force you…” I took a step forward. All I had to do was touch him and I could bring us both back to the Shadow Realm. He would pay Val the agreed upon price for the deal he’d made—I didn’t know what it was, and didn’t care—and I would be on my way.
The little hitch about demon deals, though? You had to pay up willingly or you put yourself in an entirely new world of pain and eternal torment. That’s part of the reason I was in this situation, serving a fifty-five year sentence as Val’s go-to girl. Before I was born, Grandpa made a deal with Valefar to save my grandmother from a pretty wicked curse by agreeing to hand over his firstborn daughter. But when the time came, of course he refused. As punishment, he’d gotten dunked. His soul was doomed to spend eternity trapped in the River of Souls in the Shadow Realm.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve seen what happens when you mooch on a demon deal. It’s not pretty. If you make me take you back by force, Valefar’s gonna dunk you. You don’t want that.”
Swain shook his head, backing up toward the kitchen cabinets. “I’m not mooching. I’m renegotiating for more time.”
“This isn’t an auction.” Was it too much to ask for things to go smoothly for once? I had a stack of office paperwork to get through, an English paper to write, and a boyfriend to kiss. This was eating up time I didn’t have. “Besides, I don’t have that kind of power.”
Poor Fred Swain was pale. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he peed himself at that point. His bottom lip quivered, and his left eyebrow kept twitching. I contemplated saying something soothing. Hell, I wasn’t above lying to ease his fears. For all I knew, he’d never know the difference. I had no idea what Valefar did with his collections.
But Fred surprised me and after a moment, smiled. “This whole argument is silly. I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing.
Oh, thank God. He wasn’t going to make this a federal case. Maybe I could squeeze in a little Lukas-time after all. I held out my hand. “You’re ready then?”
“Not even close.” He snorted and batted my hand away. “I mean, you’re what, twelve? You can’t force me to go back with you. You’re just a stupid kid.”
It was bad enough to have the agency’s clients looking at me like I was still in pigtails and sucking on a pacifier, but this guy? That tweaked me. Granted, I wasn’t sporting a killer chest and dangerous curves like Kendra, but I didn’t look like a grade schooler, either. “You know,” I said, advancing. “That’s totally uncall—”
A black and silver blur flew at me. I ducked to the right as a huge frying pan missed my head by inches and crashed into the closet door. It clattered to the floor, rattling around before stopping facedown at my feet. Time kind of slowed. I looked up from the pan to Fred, and he let out a very unmanly yelp. In a flourish of flailing arms and girly screams, he bolted from the room.
Really? We were going to play chase the rabbit? This wasn’t going to improve my mood.
I took off after him, rounding the corner just in time to get pelted in the face with a couch cushion. “Are you serious?” I yelled. “Don’t you know anything about self-defense? At least use something pointy!”
“You’ll never take me alive,” he screamed, continuing through the room.
“Keep this up and I might be okay with that,” I mumbled, dashing forward. He had every light in the damn place turned on, so shadowing was off the table. I had to rely on good old-fashioned reflexes.
Swain raced through the apartment, knocking over everything he could get his hands on to slow me down. I almost grabbed hold of the edge of his shirt as he turned the corner on the kitchen again, but caught air instead. I didn’t need much. Just to be touching him somehow. First fistful of anything and I was hauling his ass downstairs. He’d made his choice, and even though a small part of me felt sorry for him, he’d sealed his own fate.
Through the living room and past the hall, he swung around and hooked a right back into the kitchen. The whole circle thing was starting to make me dizzy. A book, several pens, and even his cell phone—everything that wasn’t nailed down became a projectile. I managed to dodge most of them.
Two steps over the threshold on our third trip through the kitchen and that all changed. A glop of cold hit me in the face. It landed on my neck, then oozed down the front of my shirt. Without thinking, I went to brush it away and ended up smearing the goop across the entire front of my shirt. Thick and sticky.
Swain
was standing a few feet away, armed with a scowl and brandishing a store-brand bottle of maple syrup. “I’m warning you,” he said, dropping the bottle and backing up to the counter. “Stay away from me…”
“Or you’ll what, use the waffle iron next?”
He reached behind him and grabbed a bag of flour, then hurled it at my head. Luckily, his aim was horrible. It missed me completely and smashed against the wall above my head. Of course, then it exploded, raining white dust down on me, so maybe missed was too broad a word.
Off he went again, skidding around the corner and down the hall. This was turning out to be harder than any demon takedown I’d ever done.
“Give me a break, okay? This is technically my first assignment.”
I chased him into the bedroom, only to dodge another onslaught of flying objects. When he ran out, he started swinging the only thing left. His pillow. It took exactly four swings for the damn thing to rip, feathers exploding in a storm of puffy white. They fluttered around, some sticking to the syrup, while the rest cascaded delicately to the floor.
That was it. I’d had more than enough. I was liable to dunk him myself. Shooting forward, I snatched a handful of his hair with one hand and ripped the lamp from the wall with the other. The soothing comfort of darkness blanketed the room. Without hesitation, I shadowed the hell out of there.
I landed us right outside the door to Valefar’s building. Not exactly what I’d planned. My initial target was right on top of the demon’s desk. Probably just as well. I held tight to Fred’s arm and maneuvered him through the revolving glass doors.
The instant we stepped across the threshold, I felt like I’d grown another two heads. Every demon in the waiting room, as well as the secretary behind the creepy desk, swiveled to look in my direction. Shock. That’s what I saw on their faces. A spark of indignation rose up. Had they really believed I couldn’t hack something as simple as this?
A tall, stocky demon appeared in front of us. Fred gave a whimper, shrinking away from the thing and shaking uncontrollably.
“Miss Darker,” he said with a thick southern accent. His lips pressed firm in what I could only imagine was disgust, his gaze traveling up and down Fred. “I see you brought Valefar’s package… In a single piece, even.”
I patted Fred’s arm, then gave him a good shove forward. “Yep. All safe and sound. Not a hair harmed.”
“Yes.” He continued watching Fred as though the guy was bad cheese or something. Grabbing Fred’s arm and twisting toward the door, he said, “Well, we’ll see what Valefar has to say about that.”
Judging from the look in his eyes, I got the feeling Valefar wouldn’t be giving me a gold star for this…
Chapter Three
It was just after three when I walked through the office door. Mom and Lukas were huddled together over a stack of papers, and when she looked up, taking in my new breakfast of feathers fashion, her lips twisted into a typical Mom-frown. “Do I even want to know?”
Lukas cocked his brow and flashed a killer grin. “I’m not up on this century’s fashion, but I have to say, Jessie. You do look rather fetching in feathers.”
Mom didn’t even try to hide her snickering.
“Aren’t you a riot,” I said, trying to toe the heel of my foot from my sneaker without having to touch it. There was maple syrup everywhere. “I look like the coked-up ghost of Big Bird.” The shoe came off, but I lost my balance in the process, tipping drastically to the left.
I would have gone over, too, if it hadn’t been for my boyfriend and his more-than-human reflexes. Dad warned us that Lukas would start to develop demon-like resources, but still hadn’t elaborated as to exactly what that meant. Lately, Lukas was always a half step ahead. It was like he knew what was going to happen seconds before we did. He’d reach for the phone a moment too early.
…Or catch something just before it hit the ground.
“Hi,” he said, looking down as I hovered in his arms, inches from the floor. Those liquid brown eyes would be the death of me.
I knew Mom was watching, but I couldn’t help grinning like an idiot. He brought out the stupid side in me. A fearless Monster Masher turned to girl-goop whenever he flashed that sexy grin. I blew at a feather clinging to a strand of hair. “Hi, right back atcha.”
“So I was thinking—” Lukas’s eyes widened. He gasped. Not good. “Oh no.”
I blew at the feather again. This time it came loose and fell to the floor. “Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for…”
He cringed. Arms tightening around me, he sucked in a breath and whispered, “Jessie—”
One minute I was staring into the most amazing liquid brown eyes this side of the Shadow Realm, the next I’m looking up at the ceiling, head cracked against the hardwood floor and back muscles twitching in a flurry of floating white feathers. Lukas was nowhere in sight.
Mom’s long blond hair appeared overhead a moment later, followed by her arm. Extending a hand, she asked, “You okay?”
I let her help me up, wincing as my shoulder gave a spasm. “Dad’s timing sucks.”
As one of his minions, Lukas could be summoned to Dad whenever he wanted. Didn’t matter what he was doing or where he was. Dad snapped his fingers and poof, Lukas disappeared. Valefar could do the same to me. Of course, he preferred to pop in and scare the demon crap out of me.
Mom winked. “On the contrary, I think his timing is damn near perfect. I notice every time you two start making puppy eyes at each other, your father whisks Lukas away.”
I rubbed my head. She had a point. A really annoying one. It made me wonder if dear old Dad had found some way to spy on me. Lukas had just moved off the office couch and into his own apartment. If this was what I had to look forward to, I was going to scream.
“That could have been serious. What if I’d been dangling over the side of a cliff and Lukas’s arms were the only things keeping me from plunging to my death? Or, what if he was just about to push me from the path of a speeding truck?” I shot her a look of mock horror and clapped my hands together. A plume of white dust rose from my skin with an echoing snap. “Splat. No more adoring daughter.”
Mom rolled her eyes and waved a hand back and forth to clear away the flour. “Then I suppose you’d have to haunt your father for all eternity. Rattle chains and slam doors. That would show him.” She pointed to the door leading up to our apartment. The Darker family had lived above the office for generations. “Go get changed. We have somewhere to be in thirty minutes.”
“It’s almost four already. I thought you were having dinner with Dad?” Another good thing that had come from Lukas’s liberation from the box was Dad’s new situation. As a Shadow demon under Valefar, he was mainly confined to the Shadow Realm unless given permission to leave. With the addition of Lukas to Dad’s minion army, he was granted his freedom, and therefore allowed to spend more time on earth with us.
She pulled on her jacket. “I asked him to stop by later. Right now, we have to head into town.”
“What’s in town?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and I could swear she cringed. Just a little. “Father Saunders called. He’s running one of the booths at the Founders’ Week celebration and asked to speak with us. He said it was important.”
Hell in a hailstorm. My heart kicked into overdrive, and I swallowed back a sudden lump of worry. Father Saunders was the caretaker at Saint Vincent’s, the secret resting place for the box containing the Seven Deadly Sins. If he wanted a powwow, I would bet all the chocolate in our kitchen that he didn’t want to chat about our church attendance…
…
A blast of arctic wind kicked up, and I pulled my jacket tighter, following Mom and Lukas to the building. The Penance Town Hall was a large, old colonial building with massive pillars and an engraved brick walkway. Three years ago, they’d taken donations, stamping the names of the benefactors into the stones. Everything from lost loved ones’ memorials to declarations of love and friendship. Th
ere was even one toward the middle devoted to Mrs. Pinker’s Labradoodle, Marvin. Oddly ironic, considering it used to come out here and crap on the steps all the time.
The main lobby was crowded, and when we stepped inside, we were greeted by waves and nods. There were a surprising number of people grouped along the wall to peek at the tables full of junk from days past lining the hallway. I hadn’t realized there were so many history buffs in Penance. Then I caught sight of Ben Watkins in the corner. He was behind a table, selling his famous homemade spiked cider. Huh. That explained the crowd.
“This should be right up your alley,” I said to Lukas, who’d come back just as I’d gotten out of the shower, and insisted on coming with us. As per Dad’s orders, Lukas was my official guard dog. He took the job seriously, hardly leaving my side. Not that I minded. No girl in her right mind would whine about being shadowed by tall, dark, and dangerous.
He snorted. “I’d rather not relive my early years, thank you. I’m more than content to live solely in the present.”
“This must be terribly disorienting,” Mom said over her shoulder, giving Lukas a sympathetic frown. She stopped and pulled us off to the side to let a larger group of people pass. “This is history to us, but to you, it must seem like it was only months ago. There’s really no need for you to be here. We’re just going to talk to the Father.”
Lukas hadn’t had the best life back in the eighteen hundreds. With an abusive father and homicidal fiancée, his days were filled with mostly unhappy memories. All this junk reminding him of that misery had to suck. Still, he shook his head and stayed by my side. “I’m fine, Klaire.”
She nodded and started walking again, continuing down the row. Father Saunders’s table was at the end of the hall, just past the spiked cider. Thankfully, the crowd was much thinner down there.
“Klaire.” The priest greeted us with a genuinely warm smile. “Thank you for coming so quickly.” He turned to Lukas and me and with a friendly nod, said, “Very nice to see you both. I trust all is well?”